Delida Costin built her career on high-growth teams in industries where technology forced evolution. She is an enterprise-wide leader who builds substantive partnerships with boards of directors, C-level executives and investors to prepare and execute public offerings, M&A and other high-stakes strategic initiatives. She is laser focused on both rigor and creativity to drive business results.
Her expertise is an asset for small or mid-market public or private companies that are poised to navigate rapid growth landmines such as regulatory uncertainty where policy has not been established, high-profile litigation, and new compliance and risk management requirements. Her foresight facilitates internal growth activities such as accelerating revenue, market expansion, initial public offering readiness and acquisitions. She also understands how relationships with regulators, politicians and other industry leaders can create industry standards and drive policy.
Professional background
- General counsel at lynda.com, a company dedicated to helping individuals transform their lives through online learning prior to its sale to LinkedIn.
- Pandora Media’s senior vice president, secretary and general counsel where she built and led the legal team that took the company public in 2011 and initiated groundbreaking digital music copyright discussions that impacted the copyright and antitrust boundaries for digital music delivery.
- Vice president and assistant general counsel at CNET Networks (subsequently purchased by CBS), an Internet pioneer that helped innovate early online advertising. She helped CNET Download.com develop one of the first comprehensive repositories for safe downloads, making decisions about peer-to-peer software accessibility in the midst of legal challenges.
- Advisory board member of imageSurge (converting storefronts into street-side touch interactive digital experiences) and Laugh Radio (providing comedy on demand).
Citizenship
Delida is a board director and finance committee member of the Independent Television Service, the producer of the Emmy award winning series Independent Lens. She is also vice president of the Oakland Symphony board where she chairs the personnel committee.
She previously served as the board chair of the Lincoln Child Center, an organization that has served abused, neglected and emotionally challenged children and their families throughout the Bay Area for over 125 years. She was also on the board of Techbridge, an Oakland-based organization dedicated to expanding academic and career options for girls in science, technology, and engineering. During her career she has worked to ensure that prisoners have access to law libraries, taught English to Hmong kids, won political asylum for a Haitian family, served as a sexual assault hotline crisis counselor, and advocated for sexual assault survivors as they interacted with medical and law enforcement personnel.
Fun facts
Delida created Sisters Testify, a history project designed to find and engage 1600 people who connected on the pages of the New York Times in 1991. They signed the African American Women in Defense of Ourselves proclamation following Anita Hill’s testimony during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Delida moved to California to snowboard (a sport she taught briefly through Youth Enrichment Services at various New England resorts).
When she was in elementary school, Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Andre Norton’s Outside ignited her lifelong love affair with science fiction and fantasy.
Other facts
Delida is an alumnus of Northwestern University, Boston University School of Law and the U.C. Berkeley Executive Education Program at the Haas School of Business. She completed programs at Stanford University’s Directors College Program, Andreessen Horowitz’s Prospective Board Training, and Silicon Valley Directors Exchange.
Delida started her career as an associate attorney at the law firms of Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in Palo Alto. Bar admissions in California, New York and Massachusetts. She operated a small law practice from 2006-2010 that was focused on providing service to small business owners in the Bay Area and New York.
In September 2015, Delida received the Silver Shingle Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University School of Law. She was honored as a Forever Influential recipient in 2014 and 2015 and as one of the Bay Area’s Most Influential Women in Business in 2012 and 2013 by the San Francisco Business Times. Delida was named a Leading Women in Tech Law of 2013 by The Recorder. The California Diversity Council named Delida as one of 2012’s Most Powerful & Influential Women.
Delida is a recognized speaker on leadership and legal topics. She has spoken at events sponsored by The Club, Practicing Law Institute, Leading Women in Technology, the National Venture Capital Association, Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus and universities across the country. She has been featured in Practical Law: The Journal, Forefront Magazine, American Bar Association Student Lawyer,The Recorder, ABA Journal and the Northwestern University Weinberg School of the Arts Magazine Spring/Summer 2016.